The fear of unknown from the abyss of the soul to cosmic chaos
by Sandro D. Fossemò
Translation by Rossella Cirigliano
“Life and dreams are leaves of the same book:
reading them in order is living,
skimming through them is dreaming”.
reading them in order is living,
skimming through them is dreaming”.
(Arthur Schopenhauer)
When the master of the
ghost story M.R. James reads Lovecraft’s essay “Supernatural
Horror in Literature”, he does not make out the deep meaning of the
term “cosmic” and naively ends up by ridiculing it to a friend of
his[1]. James makes a sensational mistake, for he does not realize
that adjective is the access key to the core of the fantastic
literature where man is often to face, with his own might only, an
awfully chaotic world and, for this, unlikely to be understood by
human rationality.
As Roger Caillois justly writes in his essay “De
la féerieà la science-fiction”, the fantastic «reveals a
scandal, a laceration, an unusual, almost unbearable, invasion in the
real world. […] With the fantastic a new bewilderment, an unknown
panic appears.»[2] In such a dramatic and psychologically
decentralized condition, reality is unknown and untamable, for
supernatural forces rule it to the prejudice of the cosmic or earthly
system we believe structured and rational. Therefore, because of a
foreign and adverse environment, a psychic “laceration” arises
which, according to Edgar Allan Poe, comes out of an ill soul and,
according to Lovecraft, of a crazy universe but, for both, such an
inner gash is a passage to the horror, bound to come to death or
psychological delirium[3]. In such a context, it is easy to guess the
deep nature of terror within the fantastic as a direct manifestation
of a blind and cruel Nature that is called “cosmic terror”. It
describes the terrible fear the unknown causes, where human condition
is literally subject to indecipherable events. The link between fear
and incomprehensible occurs when the characters are not the human
beings but those supernatural events which devour the anthropocentric
element in favor of colossal and anonymous occult agitations, coming
from beyond. Lovecraft himself thinks it is important to give room to
what we have left behind, if we want to express the nature of the
fantastic. «The humanocentric pose is impossible to me, for I cannot
acquire the primitive myopia which magnifies the earth and ignores
the background. Pleasure to me is wonder – the unexplored, the
unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that
lurks behind superficial mutability.»[4] Thus it is a question of
freeing and interpreting an inner and fantastic-inherent expression,
which is firstly amplified to the detriment of the anthropocentric
element and then changed into a horror sense under the influence of
the unknown, which may have a metaphysical or materialistic
direction, depending on the author’s cosmic philosophy.
Poe and Lovecraft, in
their common passion for the noble science of astronomy, have both
developed a cosmogony influenced by opposed philosophical currents:
in fact Poe’s cosmic terror is metaphysical, while Lovecraft’s is
merely materialistic. Yet, it is necessary to consider that
Lovecraft’s scientific materialism recalls the figure of a “horror
poet”, as it is so secret and impenetrable in its unreal dimension
that barely touches and goes beyond metaphysics in an almost mimetic
and assimilated way, through a mechanistic analysis.
Before shortly analyzing
the differences, we must make the point that great writers such as
Poe and Lovecraft never show, in their fiction, a well defined and
easily identifiable trend within a given “philosophical system”,
just because no reductive schematism falls within the natural and
variegated existential expression of literature.
Idealism
The two well-known
American writers are great masters of “nightmare” with completely
different, if not even opposed, cultural backgrounds; but sometimes,
in spite of their obvious differences, they both have in common the
same horror expression. They both share the idea of “life as a
dream”, but they do not provide the same oneiric interpretation of
the world, since Poe’s thought, unlike Lovecraft’s, partly
inherits the philosophical development of the German romantic
idealism, dating back to early 19th century, which tends to believe
in the existence of a harmonious relationship between finite and
infinite, that is an indissoluble link between Man and God. The
idealist Schleiermacher (1768-1822)’s statement the world is not
without God, God is not without the world is totally in tune with the
theocentric cosmogony in “Eureka”, where Poe asserts that
everything has been created by “God’s Will”[5]. Obviously,
asserting that everything is created by God does not absolutely mean
that “everything is God”, but on the contrary it might mean that
“everything is controlled by God”. Short stories such as “The
colloquium of Monos and Una” and “Mesmeric Revelation” clearly
show Poe’s spiritual aspect.
In romantic idealism the
concept of the universe is totally transcendent, as nothing escapes
God’s omniscience and nothing goes beyond God’s almightiness. In
the world the most microscopic organism is structurally chained to
the macroscopic material dimensions, with an infinite net of links
which do not escape, even in the least part, God’s Will.
The new metaphysical myth
of German romantic aesthetics is a unitary art that overtakes the
dualism between finite and infinite. Poe’s fantastic assumes a
basic metaphysical structure, as it is also connected to such
principles. Metaphysics is that unknown sphere where horror often
spreads out. Fear gains ground in a hallucinative dimension, in which
the material and physic universe magically melts into the immaterial
and metaphysical universe of the dream. «If matter is the last step
of a spirit descending from high above in order to ascend again to
its original place, then in a perspective like ours we can certainly
talk about “metaphysical horror”, due to the exact influence of
the spiritual world into matter, a sort of transfiguration of
reality, that is the indissoluble pivot of any metaphysical
concept.»[6] Thanks to the concept of spiritual metaphysics as all
the same with natural physics, the writer is able to create a harmony
of fantastic effects, deeply connected to metaphysical horror.
To better understand the
mystery relating Poe’s art to horror, in my opinion it is necessary
to take partly into consideration Schelling[7] (1775-1854), who
considers God as an “irrational will” dictated by a negative,
blind and obscure principle, in everlasting contrast with a positive
and rational one[8].
Materialism
Lovecraft’s cosmogony is
a completely different thing: drawing inspiration partly from
Schopenhauer[9] (1788-1860), he considers the world as a dream devoid
of a divine guidance, but rather at the mercy of blind and irrational
forces, ready to unchain a crazy and imperturbable universe, which is
not by nature against, but unaware, of man. Lovecraft goes deeper
into cosmic philosophy, starting from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche
(1844-1900) and then outstripping them because of a concrete
scientific materialism,[10] concerning an inscrutable cosmos that
appears mysterious, inflexible, oneiric, multiform, multicolored and,
at the same time, indifferent and chaotic. This recalls, more or
less, the Epicurean mechanistic materialism, where the universe is
interpreted on the basis of an automatic and mixed combination of
atoms according to a mechanistic system, which is not fortuitous[11]
but deterministic and causal and totally excludes any divine
interference. «There is nothing to take real exception to in the
statement that a given group of human tendencies springs from the
natural collocation of material particles operating automatically
without the intervention of an external consciousness. Such a
statement does not imply in any way the action of chance (for a
cosmos of mutually interacting parts is all law & no chance…)
[…] The whole cosmos is, always has been, and always will be a
limitless field of force composed of alternately combining and
dispersing electrons. They work in fixed ways, none of which need
explanation by any hypothetical “spiritual” world apart from that
whose laws they obey. […] Everything that exists or happens, exists
or happens because the balance of forces in the cosmic pattern makes
it inevitable.»[12]
Although Lovecraft
believes in materialism, his idea about the universe is not only
limited to the ephemeral material contact of human senses with
external objects, but in the cosmos is something much deeper and more
obscure that common human knowledge cannot make out. For example, in
the short story “The Silver Key” the possibility is described of
the predisposed scatter-brained dreamer, Randolph Carter, to enter,
in a less limited way, the sphere of dreams, thanks to a particular
key; here it is possible to overpass “Maya’s veil”[13] and
access, without any metaphysical abstractions, physically to the true
reality of a blind and unknown universe made up of huge space-time
labyrinths, immersed in an infinitely repeatable interlacement. It is
important to consider that Carter’s is not a personal supernatural
experience but, on the contrary, the space-time world is depicted as
a scientific fact of the universe: it is a materialist-mechanistic
answer to the metaphysics of chaos. For Lovecraft the world of dreams
is not the “magical” or “mystic” universe of some romantic
fanatic, but it is exactly a possible cosmos’ revelation that
allows man to live ultra mundane experiences.
«From my experience I
cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is
indeed sojourning in another and incorporeal life of far different
nature from the life we know, and of which only the slightest and
most indistinct memories linger after waking.»[14]
Based on the dream
revelation of a peculiarly unusual universe, these examples show that
man is subject to an imperceptible dimension, able to overwhelm him
whenever it wants to.
Fantastic realism
In the difficult exegesis
of Lovecraft’s imagination there is no need to scientifically
explain all that happens, because it would undermine the natural
imaginative inclination of fantastic literature. Yet, we can try to
play on human impossibility, although scientific knowledge and means
are available, to dominate such a mechanistic and chaotic Nature,
which becomes so dangerously unforeseeable to produce cosmic horror.
«In reply, I would suggest that none of my narratives aims at
scientific accuracy and inclusiveness, each being rather a mere
transcript of an isolated mood or idea with its imaginative
ramifications.»[15] Lovecraft always tries to make fantastic
credible; that is to pervade the scientific aspect with the ultra
mundane one in order to make the narration more involving and
impressive. In fact, human fear is fuelled by the fact that the
monstrous event might happen if certain scientifically possible
combinations are satisfied, whose results are unknown to us.
If for Schopenhauer man is
at least a “metaphysical animal” continuously wondering about the
meaning of existence, for Lovecraft instead man is a poor “entrapped
animal”, lonely in the lost jungle of the universe, with no
Providence to help him, since life is inexorably attacked by unknown
cosmic overwhelming events, haunted by horrible dark creatures,
without the victim hoping to be saved in an ultra mundane life. The
only chance to be saved depends on the ability and resources of the
victim.
Eternal return
In such a blind and
chaotic universe where existence is engulfed in a cruelly
uncontrolled and repetitive game, which does not distinguish life
from death or justice from injustice, Nietzsche’s concept of
“eternal return” slightly complies with Lovecraft’s
indifferentism. «Nothing but a cycle is in any case conceivable—a
cycle or an infinite rearrangement, if that be a tenable thought.
Nietzsche saw this when he spoke of the ewigen wiederkunft[16]. In
absolute eternity there is neither starting-point nor
destination.»[17] When the German philosopher writes in the Gay
Science: «what if a demon crept after thee into thy loneliest
loneliness some day or night, and said to thee: “This life, as thou
livest it at present, and hast lived it, thou must live it once more,
and also innumerable times; and there will be nothing new in it, but
every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh, and all
the unspeakably small and great in thy life must come to thee again,
and all in the same series and sequence and similarly this spider and
this moonlight among the trees, and similarly this moment, and I
myself. The eternal sand-glass of existence will ever be turned once
more, and thou with it, thou speck of dust!”»[18] he seems to
clearly recall a paragraph of a short story of Lovecraft’s about
the existential tragedy of man, overwhelmed by the infinite coil of
chaotic and repetitive cosmic terror, prey in the eternal return of
horrible and devilish[19] beasts totally far from the least concept
of mercy and repentance. Like the grotesque “The Rats in the Wall”,
where the character is constantly and psychologically tortured by the
eternal recurrence of an obsessive and «insidious scurrying»[20] of
rats hiding in the walls and scampering along black pits full «of
sawed, picked bones and opened skulls!»[21] An obvious example of
eternal return is told in the horrifying short story “The Winged
Death”, where the horrible blue-winged fly returns continuously to
the doctor’s room to take revenge for a diabolic murder.
Mankind is exclusively a
blind coil where ancient and new civilizations continuously sink and
rise, without any possible external power being able to perpetually
rule with its systems and values. In his famous story “The Call of
Cthulhu”, Lovecraft gives an example and writes: «What has risen
may sink, and what has sunk may rise.»[22] Nothing can escape the
disgraceful and unexpected evolution of cosmic matter, where the only
ruler is chaos eternal return, fully master of the abysses with
neither beginning nor end. In order to understand Lovecraft’s
abyssal nightmare, we have to imagine a crazy world, which wanders
aimlessly from nothingness to existence and from existence to
nothingness, totally far and unaware of our desires and needs. Chaos
eternal return imposes a cosmic horror hegemony on the planetary
life, causing its consequent nihilism.
The eternal return is a
universal and natural manifestation of “Nothing”. For Nietzsche
man can get over such nihilistic condition if he actively accepts the
eternal return[23] as the consequent liberation of power will,
immersed in the creative energy and in the joy of a Dionysian spirit.
Lovecraft, on the contrary, considers the eternal return with horror,
ending up with evolving human condition into an unplanned oneiric
materialistic dimension; in the refuge of dreams and visions he can
see human possibility to give birth to the «greatest creations of
man»[24] and to attain «something of the glory and contentment for
which we yearn»[25], without getting to “useless puppets”[26]
overwhelmed and destroyed by the furious waves of cosmic ocean. We
can say that Nietzsche and Lovecraft are radically opposed, as far as
the psychological relationship between man and eternal return is
concerned: for the philosopher it is vital enjoyment, for the writer
it is excruciating torment.
Nietzsche’s typical
concepts, such as “Amor fati”[27] or “Superman”,[28] are
considered “useless effort” by the materialistic-cosmocentric
writer, according to whom such myths are totally far from the tragic
actions of Lovecraft’s dreamer and lonely hero, who is busy not to
be driven crazy and to understand the true nature of reality, trying
to defend his own existence against those awful human creatures that
sometimes belong to the same genetic legacy as the heroic main
character’s. For example, I can mention the character in “The
Shadow over Innsmouth” who finds out, to his surprise, he is not a
different creature from those horrible monsters that have besieged
him, almost to prove that there is no difference between men and
beasts.
Beyond good and evil
With the German
philosopher Lovecraft shares not only a pagan Anti-Christianity, but
also the pointless inclination man has towards human existence,
devoid of any “truth”, since it is forced to ceaselessly and
inevitably fight for surviving beyond any moral limits of good and
evil, as we cannot «sink or rise to any other “reality”, but
just that of our own impulses»[29]. Christianity dogma is reduced to
a naïve point of view due to the unawareness of men or to a
religious imposture. «It is a general objection to Christianity that
it stifled artistic freedom, trampled on healthy instincts, and set
up false and unjust standards. On this assumption a friend of mine,
Samuel Loveman, Esq., has written a magnificent ode “To Satan”[30].
[…] The idea of deity is a logical and inevitable result of
ignorance, since the savage can conceive of no action save by a
volition and personality like his own.»[31] Shortly, for the writer
no “Right Road” exists and has ever existed, but we are and we
shall always be victims of a deep and intangible cosmic conflict,
universally fair for everyone. «We can neither predict nor
determine, for we are but the creatures of blind destiny.»[32]
Therefore it is obvious that such a system cannot absolutely exist
among “human beings” but more naturally among “beasts”, whose
wild and foolish nature is in perfect harmony and symbiosis. But is
Lovecraft maybe talking of men? Does his gruesome art hide a dramatic
report of the infernal human condition that is made harder by the
harsh and tough fight for surviving against its own kind?
Like Nietzsche, in his
fiction Lovecraft does not make the “metaphysical mistake” of
showing the absence or presence of God in the world: God simply does
not exist and there is no need to meet him or to avoid him.
Lovecraft’s universe is only an eternal cosmic fury, where an
emotionless theater of awful creatures rages. «All life is struggle
and combat—itself a disproof of divinity—and in this fray an
organism fights both its fellows and its surroundings.»[33] For such
beasts neither divine plan nor ontological void exists, but only an
instinctive activity and necessary will that becomes a violent war
far from the least moral concept of good or evil[34], since it occurs
for the preservation and victory of the stronger species on the
weaker one. In the short novel “At the Mountains of Madness” the
“Old Ones” are defeated by the ruthless “Shoggoths”. In the
world it is not important whether an action is “good” or “evil”,
but it is important to protect the existence and the sovereignty of
the winning species. Fight and death are, for Lovecraft, completely
obvious and natural conditions.
All the earthly and cosmic
elements, such as things, plants, men or awful beasts are only
objects, even if the world is inexplicably a terrible oneiric
illusion.[35] That is why Lovecraft does not always analyze the
psychology of his characters; he would contradict and distort his
cosmos-centric vision where men do not matter more than ants.[36] The
writer is not much interested in human psychological investigations,
for cosmic terror is not human but supernatural.
Poe and Lovecraft
Even though Poe’s terror
comes from the soul whereas Lovecraft’s terror originates within
the cosmos, for both fear is caused by the same elements originating
cosmic horror: chaos and abyss. Yet, Poe sinks in the soul to knock
down external reality, Lovecraft on the contrary sinks in the cosmos
to demolish inner reality. Another great difference is that Poe’s
mythology is both Christian and pagan, Lovecraft’s is entirely
pagan.
In “The Tell-tale Heart”
we can find a dark atmosphere, like Lovecraft’s mad universe, in an
abyssal and dizzy room described, by the tormentor, which is the main
character, as so hidden and dark to almost seem the gloomy
hidden-place of a devilish-eyed “monstrous creature”. Besides, in
“The Man of the Crowd” the same disturbing and omnipresent
atmosphere is evoked as in Lovecraft’s delirious cosmos: the
chaotic movement of an unknown and lost crowd, where Poe manages
brilliantly to predict incommunicability, almost depicts the fuzzy
wandering of the horrible Lovecraft’s beasts. In the story is also
a strategic fusion of cosmic horror and incommunicability.
A sublime moment of cosmic
terror, at such a limit between real and supernatural to almost
express a degenerative hallucination of human mind, is described at
the end of “The Fall of the House of Usher” with the chromatic
energy of such an impulsive and impetuous universe to recall
Lovecraft’s impressive style.
«The storm was still
abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway.
Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see
whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and
its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full,
setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that
once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as
extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to
the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened – there came
a fierce breath of the whirlwind – the entire orb of the satellite
burst at once upon my sight – my brain reeled as I saw the mighty
walls rushing asunder – there was a long tumultuous shouting sound
like the voice of a thousand waters – and the deep and dank tarn at
my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House
of Usher.»[37]
The same can be said for
the final part of “Metzengerstein”.
«The fury of the tempest
immediately died away, and a dead calm sullenly succeeded. A white
flame still enveloped the building like a shroud and, streaming far
away into the quiet atmosphere, shot forth a glare of preternatural
light; while a cloud of smoke settled heavily over the battlements in
the distinct colossal figure of a horse.»[38]
Taking inspiration and
broadening the concept of Poe’s soul terror, Lovecraft becomes “the
cosmic Poe”, as Jacques Bergier states. Following this point of
view Lovecraft’s cosmic terror can be partly[39] considered as a
materialistic and mythological evolution of Poe’s terror to the
creation of a fascinating and potential horror science fiction.
In spite of their
radically different cultural background, a short story where Poe’s
cosmic terror is incredibly similar as Lovecraft’s is “A Descent
into Maelstrom”: here metaphysics of events is chaotically linked
to the fear of sudden and unknown events, for a ship is suspended in
a terrible jam after being overwhelmed by supernatural events nobody
knows the causes of. The ship sinking represents universe instability
and its wrecks show the abyss chaos has left behind. In this short
story, Poe’s cosmic terror is close to Lovecraft’s because it is
related to that sphere of unknown and unpredictable that does not
cross the border of supernatural universe, but stays within the
“cosmos” and its inexplicable mysteries. How cannot this work
contradict Poe’s idealism? The answer is provided by the author
himself, who reports a sentence written by Joseph Glanvill in the
epigraph of the story: «The ways of God in Nature (as in Providence)
are not as ours are: nor are the models that we frame any way
commensurate to the vastness and profundity of his works; which have
a depth in them greater than the Well of Democritus.» Therefore, in
my opinion, on the basis of the theocentric cosmogony in “Eureka”
we can consider that, in spite of the frequent references to
psychological abyss without a clear opening to the ultra mundane,
Poe’s metaphoric world sometimes tends to the theological field.
You only need think of the sudden appearance of a “wild light” in
“The Fall of the House of Usher” or of the “preternatural
light” in “Metzengerstein” to presume it is about a symbolic
revelation of God’s interference in human events. In the
Christianity God is the “eternal light”, which enlightens man’s
way to salvation from a world dominated by the darkness of chaos.
Romantic Poe’s very
harmonious and sad expressive sentimentalism, which sometimes seems
to demand Providence interference on man’s wickedness[40] is
literally abandoned by Lovecraft to make room for eternal darkness in
a cold universe, impulsive and without a soul, where is no
theological comfort for a withering rose, for a dying animal, for a
man lying dead on the ground in the shade of a black-winged monstrous
creature, suddenly appeared from the unknown.[41]
The unknown
«The oldest and strongest
emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear
is fear of the unknown.»[42] With this short and popular quotation
Lovecraft suggests the deep link between the unintelligible abysses
of reality and fear arising from the inability to react directly and
dominate such distorted situations. The consequent terror causes a
psychological fear connected to earthly or metaphysical elements
mankind cannot control. In this “menacing chaos” man is like a
child lost in the wood, whose survival is constantly threatened by an
unknown and adverse Nature. In this frightful situation the sudden
howl of a wild wind causes, in the child’s mind, the fear to be
attacked by ghosts, if he does not find a shelter soon. As a
consequence, in the child’s imagination those “mythical
creatures” rise as an instinctive reaction to fear, which
substitute the real causes. Lovecraft, in his essay, gives an
enlightening example of the real nature of cosmic fear and writes:
«Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds
sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of
the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in
the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in
unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.
With this foundation, no one needs wonder at the existence of a
literature of cosmic fear.»[43] But terror takes the upper hand in
the victim’s mind when he cannot understand anymore the phenomena
he sees and hears, coming from an external origin he cannot get to.
This vision is obviously supported by the fact that the uncertain and
the dangerous are always arm-in-arm; as a consequence an unknown
universe easily becomes a world full of dangers and evil events.[44]
A very good example of
psychological disorientation is in “The Crawling Chaos”[45],
where fear becomes absolute, since the main character cannot identify
anymore the natural or ultra mundane cause coming from an
unrecognizable adverse environment. His mind, engulfed in a condition
of confusion and upset due to the use of drugs, is prey of brutal and
fearful fantasies that identify the hidden being or thing as a
ghastly monster inclined to act in an unreal and uncontrollable way.
«Slowly but inexorably
crawling upon my consciousness and rising above every other
impression came a dizzying fear of the unknown: a fear all the
greater because I could not analyze it, and seeming to concern a
stealthily approaching menace; not death, but some nameless,
unheard-of thing inexpressibly more ghastly and abhorrent. […] The
waves were dark and purplish, almost black and clutched at the
yielding red mud of the bank as if with uncouth, greedy hands. I
could not but feel that some noxious marine mind had declared a war
of extermination upon all the solid ground, perhaps abetted by the
angry sky.»[46]
The Cthulhu myths
It is exactly that
perverse psychological link, made up of narrative delirium and
association of the myth with a naïve theophany, to lead Lovecraft to
the brilliant and original creation of “The Cthulhu Myths”, which
are like the lord of chaos, Seth, in Egyptian mythology. Pagan
mythology predisposition to comply with cosmological theories leads
Lovecraft to the creation of a pantheon inspired by his cosmogony. In
fact, such divinities symbolize the chaotic structure of world
reality.
In the horrible dimension
of chaos, with great imagination the writer pictorially describes the
nightmare coming from unknown realities, where the “light”
deceives our world perception, because it is in the “darkness” of
the unknown that the true aspect of mankind lies. In this context
Lovecraft becomes a sort of “black priest”[47] of an immanent
cosmic pantheon, where an unmasked vision of reality causes a
dreadful psychological delirium. In the well-known story “Dagon”
such a mythological and dark show is analyzed in memorable lines.
«[…] I think my horror
was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and looked down the
other side into an immeasurable pit or canyon, whose black recesses
the moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine. I felt myself on
the edge of the world, peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos
of eternal night […] gazing into the Stygian deeps where no light
had yet penetrated. […] the thing slid into view above the dark
waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a
stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it
flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head
and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad
then.»[48]
When we experience such
feelings of panic we unwarily create some mythologies, which
represent human events. So, taking psychoanalysis into consideration,
through these myths we put on ourselves the “mask” of the myth,
which subconsciously express our real way of being.
The unbearable feeling of
weakness and bewilderment towards the unknown and the unrecognizable,
becoming terribly uncatchable to cause a terrible psychic delirium,
calls to mind “The Haunter of the Dark” in which the idiot and
blind god Azathoth, who lives in the centre of the universe in a
mindless and sluggish way, appears before Robert Blake.
«Before his eyes a
kaleidoscopic range of phantasmal images played, all of them
dissolving at intervals into the picture of a vast, unplumbed abyss
of night wherein whirled suns and worlds of an even profounder
blackness. He thought of the ancient legends of Ultimate Chaos, at
whose centre sprawls the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All
Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous
dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a demoniac flute
held in nameless paws.»[49]
Before Robert Blake’s
involvement by Azathoth, it is important to remember that a sort of
assimilation occurs: the delirious aspect of the idiot god quickly
penetrates the protagonist’s feelings to show how it is easy for
the frail human condition to be psychologically absorbed by the
unknown.
The myths of Cthulhu hurl
us before the nameless, make us sink in the dark abyss, pervade us of
an ancestral fear leading to cosmic terror through an eternal and
unsolvable recurrence of the dreadful event. They put us before the
impenetrability of unknown with no easily identifiable semantic
contents, in order to disclose us that chaos is the only ruling power
nobody can make out. In this diabolic system the myths show us the
true aspect of cosmic reality at the cost of an agonizing
psychological state close to madness.
Prometheus’ nightmare
Fear also arises from the
existential uselessness of man who, even though he is endowed with
reason and noteworthy techno-scientific resources, is often alone
before the immensity of an unknown and adverse chaotic universe,
enraged by a blind and irreparable force, where flocks of
“night-gaunts” linger. They are wicked and unknown creatures
without a face, black, quiet, bat-like winged and provided with
pointed tails.
Unlike what many people
think, the progress of scientific knowledge has not eliminated the
fear of unknown; yet it has caused new fears, due to the discovery of
recent cosmic riddles with a possible and technical reaction against
mankind where chaos, no more technologically controlled, ends up with
merging with that same technological weapon created by man to defend
himself. About this, the fascinating story “From Beyond” is to be
considered. Here an elated scientist through an electronic device
manages, at his own expense, to force his way to another space-time
dimension infested by appalling and aggressive alien beings. As well
as his horror Lovecraft describes the psychological trouble caused by
contemporary man’s belief in a rational and comfortable world
gained thanks to the rule of scientific progress over Nature, which
unfortunately is not able to avoid the bewilderment of man towards
adverse and unknown natural events, which become unforeseeably
violent. We have a clear example of this in “Cool Air” with the
horrible failure of a doctor, who has vainly tried to achieve
immortality by means of an inadequate freezing device that eventually
breaks down. Another terrifying example is given by “Herbert West,
Reanimator” where is described doctor West’s perverse ambition
since he was at university to make dead live again. Thanks to the
discovery of a particular serum, West manages to reactivate, after
various and failed attempts, life from dead bodies, but with the
tragic consequence that these creatures revolt and kill him. The
horror caused by madly wandering zombies recalls impressive
atmospheres of cosmic terror.
«[…] lumps of graveyard
clay had been galvanized into morbid, unnatural, and brainless motion
by various modifications of the vital solution.
One thing had uttered a
nerve-shattering scream; another had risen violently, beaten us both
to unconsciousness, and run amuck in a shocking way before it could
be placed behind asylum bars; still another, a loathsome African
monstrosity, had clawed out of its shallow grave and done a deed —
West had had to shoot that object.
[…]It was disturbing to
think that one, perhaps two, of our monsters still lived — that
thought haunted us shadowingly, till finally West disappeared under
frightful circumstances.»[50]
What’s more astonishing
in this story is the fact that, although the doctor repeatedly fails,
he is not going to stop his experiments nor to think about what he is
doing, for what is really important to him is to achieve his goal,
with no merciful mediation.[51] Doctor West even kills in cold blood
to obtain suitable human guinea-pigs for his ferocious objectives.
With his clear declaration
against the blind and fallible techno-scientific determinism we can
undoubtedly reckon that the writer can be considered a scientific
rationalist, who refuses positivistic scientism[52]. The horrible
corpses that deliriously revive can be seen as a metaphor
representing the dreadful consequence of a science that is not
humanistic but merely functional.
The colour of space
In the science fiction story “The Color out of Space” chaos suddenly occurs due to the unexpected fall of a meteorite on a peaceful farm in Arkham and the consequent pollution, which entirely destroys environment balance and stability. It is just that chaotic and devastating nature, caused by the meteorite radiations, to crumble the power of human rationality before the inconsistency of an obscene reality, which is not peaceful and arranged anymore. Chemical contaminations of animals and plants and inexplicable events unexpectedly occur out of thin air with incredible and gruesome massacres, which sadistically look like a perverse ritual caused by a mad Nature, possessed by an iridescent alien force.
In the science fiction story “The Color out of Space” chaos suddenly occurs due to the unexpected fall of a meteorite on a peaceful farm in Arkham and the consequent pollution, which entirely destroys environment balance and stability. It is just that chaotic and devastating nature, caused by the meteorite radiations, to crumble the power of human rationality before the inconsistency of an obscene reality, which is not peaceful and arranged anymore. Chemical contaminations of animals and plants and inexplicable events unexpectedly occur out of thin air with incredible and gruesome massacres, which sadistically look like a perverse ritual caused by a mad Nature, possessed by an iridescent alien force.
«So the men paused
indecisively as the light from the well grew stronger and the hitched
horses pawed and whinnied in increasing frenzy. It was truly an awful
moment; with terror in that ancient and accursed house itself, four
monstrous sets of fragments-two from the house and two from the
well-in the woodshed behind, and that shaft of unknown and unholy
iridescence from the slimy depths in front.»[53]
The story symbolically
describes several analyzed aspects complying with cosmic terror. The
meteorite represents cosmic vitality falling heavily upon us from an
oceanic and inexplicable universe. The peaceful farm that is suddenly
upset represents chaos unpredictable interference. The physical
annihilation of the farm owner, Nahum Gardner, reduced to a pile of
putrescent shapeless flesh, symbolizes the total impassiveness of
cosmic agents. The well exemplifies the unknown and the inexplicable
and unnatural colorful glow, emerging from there, seems to be endowed
with a “conscience and will” of its own, so that to the
blasphemous theophany of the farmers it appears as a “mysterious
creature”.
«No doubt it is still
down the well – I know there was something wrong with the sunlight
I saw above the miasmal brink. The rustics say the blight creeps an
inch a year, so perhaps there is a kind of growth or nourishment even
now. But whatever demon hatchling is there, it must be tethered to
something or else it would quickly spread. Is it fastened to the
roots of those trees that claw the air? One of the current Arkham
tales is about fat oaks that shine and move as they ought not to do
at night.»[54]
The colorful light that at
the end of the story goes back to the unlimited darkness of the
universe, from where it has come, reminds us of eternal return.
Lovecraft’s work
generally shows an alien and labyrinth-like situation within a cosmic
and immanent chessboard fated, by a blind universal game, to sow dead
people and repeated devastations sporadically, yet to cause mentally
disturbed conditions continuously, making man sink into an inner
chasm like an abyssal hole, which is due to an environment that is
not peaceful anymore, but extremely unknown to us and eternally
adverse rightly because of our limited comprehension.
Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth
The delirious animal
spirit ferociously revolting against the Apollonian and Promethean
spirit of the rational world recalls the awakening of instinctive and
powerful Cthulhu, terrible messenger of a cruel law dominated by
chaos and violence, which generates a mad and perverted world
stricken with pleasant orgiastic rites and sacrificial crimes.
«That cult would never
die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would
take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume
His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind
would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond
good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting
and killing and reveling in joy.»[55]
In a certain sense it is
as if Lovecraft wanted us to be totally undeceived by the pretention
to live in a benevolent cosmos, only apparently healthy and rational,
by using the “unknown” as a door towards the real world where
«everything a-rottin’ an’ dyin’, an’ boarded-up monsters
crawlin’ an’ bleatin’ an’ barkin’ an’ hoppin’ araoun’
black cellars an’ attics every way ye turn.»[56] Yet the door is
kept by Yog-Sothoth, the terrible guardian of the intelligible,
representing the psychological impossibility to contemplate reality
without running the risk to die or be driven mad.
We can eventually end our
analysis by considering that cosmic terror arises from the ability to
express a certain atmosphere of arcane and inexplicable destructive
flog in particular environments dominated by the eternally repetitive
existence of anonymous and intangible diabolic ultra mundane or
strange forces or presences. They surprise and deceive our natural
defenses or scientific knowledge quickly or skillfully so as to drive
our mind into the abyss of a chaos without a way out[57]. As those
last words of dying Nahum’s clearly recall: «Can’t git away –
draws ye – ye know summ’at’s comin’ but tain’t no use…»[58]
Note
1) See L’enciclopedia della paura. La letteratura horror dalla A alla Z, Mauro Boselli ed., Sergio Bonelli publ., 1991, Milano, p.40. Pamphlet enclosed to Dylan Dog.
2) See Roger Caillois, De la féerie à la science-fiction, Paris, Gallimard, 1966.
3) Unlike Poe, Lovecraft tends to end his stories mainly with the protagonist’s mental destabilization.
4) p. 53, in H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.
5) See E.A.Poe, Eureka, Bompiani, 2001.
8)The victory of positive over negative is the evidence of God existence.
12) Lovecraft’s letter to Miss Elizabeth Toldridge, p. 355-56 in H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters, Harkham House, 1968.
15) p. 54, in H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.
18) F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, af. 341. The Heaviest Burden. http://www.archive.org/details/completenietasch10nietuoft, Transl. from German by Oscar Levy (Translator’s note).
21) Ibidem.
27) “Love of fate” in Latin (Translator’s note).
28) It is above all in the concept of “Superman” that the radical difference between Lovecraft and Nietzsche is more obvious.
29) F. Nietzsche, Beyond good or evil, af.36, transl. by Helen Zimmern, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-h.htm.
30) p. 58, in H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.
31) p. 60, in H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.
32) p. 61, in H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.
33) p. 57, in H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.
34) If man is prey of the violent manifestations of a maddened universe, Lovecraft could not certainly limit human life within the
moral concepts such as “good” and “evil”!
35) Lovecraft cannot be considered as a totally cold and arid materialist, because he considers life as a dream. As a consequence and
paradoxically, in Lovecraft’s materialism a “reflexive poetic mood” can be seen, which makes him ambiguous and hardly
understandable in his being materialist and mechanist at the same time.
36) Yet, superficial criticism has considered this aspect as a deficiency by the writer.
37) E.A. Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher, in http://www.enotes.com/fall-house-usher-text/the-fall-house-usher
38) E.A. Poe, Metzengerstein, in http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a0069.pdf
39) I wrote “partly” because Lovecraft takes most inspiration from Machen and Lord Dunsany.
40) In other stories Poe provides a rational and psychological, rather than divine, solution.
41) Lovecraft goes beyond the classical limits of terror and gets to the “dreadful”. That cosmic dreadfulness will make him a real
master of horror.
42) H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural horror in literature, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.asp
43) ibidem
44) See Ernst H. Gombrich, Aby Warburg: an intellectual biography, London, 1970. It analyzes the interpretative resemblance both
Warburg and Lovecraft have towards “cosmic fear”.
45) I would like to make it clear that this story was written by Lovecraft with Winifred V. Jackson’s collaboration.
46) H. P. Lovecraft, The Crawling Chaos, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/crc.asp
47) By priest I obviously mean a mediator of universe darkness, without any metaphysical or mystic reference.
48) H.P. Lovecraft, Dagon, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/d.asp
49) ibidem
50) H.P. Lovecraft, Herbert West-Reanimator, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/hwr.asp
51) Let us consider adverse criticism on “practical reason”, justly accused by the Frankfurt School of thinking about “the objective”
without taking social consequences into account.
52) As a convinced scientific materialist, Lovecraft does not appear to completely adverse positivism but he criticizes its degeneration
into scientism.
53) H.P. Lovecraft, The color out of Space, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/cs.asp
54) ibidem
55) H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu, http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thecallofcthulhu.htm
56) H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/theshadowoverinnsmouth.htm
57) See H.P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.
58) H.P. Lovecraft, The colour out of Space, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/cs.asp
Bibliography
1) See L’enciclopedia della paura. La letteratura horror dalla A alla Z, Mauro Boselli ed., Sergio Bonelli publ., 1991, Milano, p.40. Pamphlet enclosed to Dylan Dog.
2) See Roger Caillois, De la féerie à la science-fiction, Paris, Gallimard, 1966.
3) Unlike Poe, Lovecraft tends to end his stories mainly with the protagonist’s mental destabilization.
4) p. 53, in H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.
5) See E.A.Poe, Eureka, Bompiani, 2001.
6)Transl.
by Rossella Cirigliano from Giorgio Ghidetti, Poe: l’eresia di un
americano maledetto, Arnaud editore, Firenze, 1989, p. 104.
7)God is not only Spirit, but it also penetrates Nature.8)The victory of positive over negative is the evidence of God existence.
9)Yet
it is necessary to consider that Schopenhauer is, in turn, influenced
by Schelling about that “irrational will” inside Poe’s art. As a
consequence, we can say that Schelling’s thought is at the basis of that
cosmic fear that in Poe and Lovecraft will find a common ground with
radically different developments. It
is also to be cleared that even though Poe sometimes planned a cosmic
terror in a metaphysical sense, he influenced Lovecraft’s imagination
only marginally.
10)Orig.
title: H.P. Lovecraft: the Mythos of Scientific Materialism,
Copyright©1993 by Strange Magazine, transl. by Pietro Guarriello in H.P.
Lovecraft sculptus in tenebris, edited by Michele Tetro, Nuova
Metropolis Publ., Novara, 2001, pages 25-30. See the important article
on scientific materialism.
11) For Epicurus, on the contrary, the combination of atoms is fortuitous.12) Lovecraft’s letter to Miss Elizabeth Toldridge, p. 355-56 in H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters, Harkham House, 1968.
13) According to Schopenhauer, human condition cannot observe the world in its real complexity, because the organs of human perception are blurred and deceived by Maya’s veil. Man can only interpret reality through a purely human representation. Only beyond Maya’s veil it is possible to enter a reality that is no more a play, yet truth.
14) H.P. Lovecraft, Beyond the wall of sleep, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/bws.asp415) p. 54, in H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.
16) “Eternal return” in German.
17)p. 51, in H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.18) F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, af. 341. The Heaviest Burden. http://www.archive.org/details/completenietasch10nietuoft, Transl. from German by Oscar Levy (Translator’s note).
19)
Lovecraft’s creatures look vaguely like hell devils, yet Lovecraft
refers only to pagan myths, even if Christian mythology has inherited an influence from pagan mythology. For example, we may consider the goat-like appearance of god Pan, destined to physically look like the devil.
20) H.P. Lovecraft, The Rats in the Wall, http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/theratsinthewalls.htm21) Ibidem.
22) H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu, http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thecallofcthulhu.htm
23) See Karl Lowith, Nietzsche e l’eterno ritorno, Laterza, 2003, Bari, p. 57-60.
24) H.P. Lovecraft, The night ocean, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/no.asp, written with the collaboration of Robert H. Barlow.
25) Ibidem.
26)
See Gianfranco de Turris & Sebastiano Fusco, L’ultimo demiurgo e
altri saggi lovecraftiani, Solfanelli, Chieti, 1989, p. 153.27) “Love of fate” in Latin (Translator’s note).
28) It is above all in the concept of “Superman” that the radical difference between Lovecraft and Nietzsche is more obvious.
29) F. Nietzsche, Beyond good or evil, af.36, transl. by Helen Zimmern, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-h.htm.
30) p. 58, in H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.
31) p. 60, in H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.
32) p. 61, in H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.
33) p. 57, in H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.
34) If man is prey of the violent manifestations of a maddened universe, Lovecraft could not certainly limit human life within the
moral concepts such as “good” and “evil”!
35) Lovecraft cannot be considered as a totally cold and arid materialist, because he considers life as a dream. As a consequence and
paradoxically, in Lovecraft’s materialism a “reflexive poetic mood” can be seen, which makes him ambiguous and hardly
understandable in his being materialist and mechanist at the same time.
36) Yet, superficial criticism has considered this aspect as a deficiency by the writer.
37) E.A. Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher, in http://www.enotes.com/fall-house-usher-text/the-fall-house-usher
38) E.A. Poe, Metzengerstein, in http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a0069.pdf
39) I wrote “partly” because Lovecraft takes most inspiration from Machen and Lord Dunsany.
40) In other stories Poe provides a rational and psychological, rather than divine, solution.
41) Lovecraft goes beyond the classical limits of terror and gets to the “dreadful”. That cosmic dreadfulness will make him a real
master of horror.
42) H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural horror in literature, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.asp
43) ibidem
44) See Ernst H. Gombrich, Aby Warburg: an intellectual biography, London, 1970. It analyzes the interpretative resemblance both
Warburg and Lovecraft have towards “cosmic fear”.
45) I would like to make it clear that this story was written by Lovecraft with Winifred V. Jackson’s collaboration.
46) H. P. Lovecraft, The Crawling Chaos, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/crc.asp
47) By priest I obviously mean a mediator of universe darkness, without any metaphysical or mystic reference.
48) H.P. Lovecraft, Dagon, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/d.asp
49) ibidem
50) H.P. Lovecraft, Herbert West-Reanimator, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/hwr.asp
51) Let us consider adverse criticism on “practical reason”, justly accused by the Frankfurt School of thinking about “the objective”
without taking social consequences into account.
52) As a convinced scientific materialist, Lovecraft does not appear to completely adverse positivism but he criticizes its degeneration
into scientism.
53) H.P. Lovecraft, The color out of Space, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/cs.asp
54) ibidem
55) H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu, http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thecallofcthulhu.htm
56) H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/theshadowoverinnsmouth.htm
57) See H.P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.
58) H.P. Lovecraft, The colour out of Space, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/cs.asp
Bibliography
Carlo Pagetti, Cittadini
di un assurdo universo, editrice Nord, 1989, Milano.
Gianfranco de Turris &
Sebastiano Fusco, L’ultimo demiurgo e altri saggi lovecraftiani,
Solfanelli, Chieti, 1989, p. 153.
H.P. Lovecraft, Collected
Essays, Vol. 5, Hippocampus Press, 2006.
H.P. Lovecraft,
Supernatural horror in literature, in H.P. Lovecraft’s book of
horror, edited by Stephen Jones and Dave Carson, 1994.
Leo Marchetti, Apocalissi,
Métis editrice, Chieti, 1995.
Pietro Trevisan, Il
paganesimo di H.P. Lovecraft, in the website:
http://utenti.lycos.it/politeismo/lovecra.htm [Or. Title: Sources for
The color Out of Space, in Crypt of Cthulhu, n. 28, 1984, Copyright ©
Robert M. Price]
Massimo Berruti’s
graduation thesis, H.P. Lovecraft e l’Anatomia del Nulla – Il
Mito di Cthulhu.
Il Terrore Cosmico da Poe
a Lovecraft – by Sandro D. Fossemò –
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